Press Release

Sep 17, 2019

Orion Health delivers the first Health Information Exchange (HIE) in the Middle East

First go-live for the Malaffi HIE achieved six-months after contract-sign, giving clinicians in four leading Abu Dhabi healthcare providers access to important patient information. Further roll-outs, including a patient portal and analytics services will follow next year.

The first Health Information Exchange (HIE) in the Middle East, Malaffi, went live at the end of July just six months after contracts were signed between the project company, Abu Dhabi Health Data Services (ADHDS), and technology provider Orion Health.

ADHDS, the operator of Malaffi, was established as a Public Private Partnership (PPP) between the Department of Health – Abu Dhabi (DOH) and Injazat Data Systems, a subsidiary of Mubadala Investment Company.

Clinicians at four leading healthcare providers encompassing hundreds of facilities in Abu Dhabi can now exchange and access more information about their patients, thanks to the go-live of the Malaffi HIE.

Abu Dhabi has an insurance-based healthcare system, with a mixture of public and private hospitals. They use Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) from different national and international vendors that, until now, have not been able to share information with each other.

Over the rest of this year, Malaffi (Arabic for “My File”) will see more providers and facilities also be brought on board and more information will be added to the platform, while a patient portal and analytics services are also planned for next year.

“Having successfully gone live with Malaffi within such a short period of time is a remarkable achievement given the significance of this first-of-its-kind platform in the region. We are continuously rolling out added enhancements and onboarding more providers within the Emirate in the unwavering pursuit of putting the patient experience firmly at the heart of diagnoses and treatment. Malaffi’s centralised database of unified patient records is already facilitating the greater and safer exchange of patient health information between Abu Dhabi’s hospitals, clinics, doctors and care teams. Through Malaffi, they will be more informed and more empowered to deliver the highest quality of healthcare,” said Atif Al Braiki, CEO of Abu Dhabi Health Data Services.

“Malaffi will also provide access to population health information to help inform policymakers, which we expect to be of much benefit to the current and future health of Abu Dhabi.”

The initial go-live for Malaffi is enabling selected clinicians at four healthcare organisations, SEHA, Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi (CCAD), Danat El Emarat, and Oasis Hospital, to exchange information and access demographic data of about 2.3 million patients as well as to access 33 million encounters, procedures, problems and allergy records, going back five-years.

Ian McCrae, the founder and chief executive of Orion Health, said: “The speed at which Malaffi has moved from contract to go-live is a tribute to everybody involved. There is no doubt that the information sharing that it will make possible will benefit clinicians and patients, and we look forward to working on further releases of the project that are so important for the people of Abu Dhabi.

“Malaffi is also the first health information exchange to go-live in the Middle East, where there is a dynamic health tech market showing considerable interest in population health management. We fully expect to see further health information exchanges developed in the region, and hope to be able to contribute our leading software solutions and expertise to them.”

The Malaffi HIE has been built around Orion Health’s Amadeus Platform, which includes a data repository, the Nextgate MatchMetrix master patient index to match data with patients and a provider portal among other components.